how long should i practice?

right now i have pretty much all day free since im out of work so i was going to start practicing guitar more, how long should i be practicing everything for?

right now im working on chord changes and learning new chords for 15 minutes, then going over songs i already know and learning new ones for 15 minutes, and then finishing up by going over scales and working on improvising for about 15-30 minutes.

im doing this once in the morning and once at night and then i pick up the guitar throughout the day and play but most of the time its just to mess around for a few minutes, should i make any of the exercises last longer and is there anything else i should add in?

To remember something, you should say it 3-4 times within a span of 1 hour, at equal intervals of 15 or 20 minutes. (Some things been proven that it takes your brain 3-4 times of practicing/hearing something to remember it well, and it needs a break! This is generally why lessons only go over 1-2 notes a lesson! It's to give you time on that lesson, then you PRACTICE that note for a while (normally a week for weekly lessons!) so thats a course of SEVEN DAYS to remember ONE NOTE (and other things depending on how good you are. lol) They generally give you more then a note (eg; G C D chord progression) so you can practice multiple things, but you have an entire week to do so... this allows you to remember it better along the way, and improve SO LONG AS YOU KNOW HOW.

Playing for 2 hours straight doesn't help me...

What I do is:

Practice something for 5-10 minutes.TAKE A FIVE MINUTE BREAK FROM ANYTHINGPractice that same something for 15-20 minutesTAKE ANOTHER FIVE MINUTE BREAK FROM ANYTHINGPractice that same thing for ANOTHER 15-20 minutes. Take a break for the remainder of that '1 hour' block. (35-50 minutes of practice, with breaks in between)

By then I normally see improvement, my muscle memory kicks in the 2nd or 3rd practice, and I remember it 10x easier. Break things into small parts (small enough so you can remember the entire thing the FIRST TIME YOU PLAY IT! I suggest. Even if that is only 3-4 notes!)

I learned "Classico" by Tenacious D by breaking the entire Intro up at every 3rd note, and took me like 4-5 hours to memorize the entire thing and play it (almost) up to speed. I'm still making a few mistakes...

Please add me if as a friend I helped! (I like to think I'm a friendly person)

Look dude it depends what you're goals are. If you wanna be a godlike guitarist I reckon practicing 9 hours a day is perfect. Make sure you have a awesome practice routine down to make sure you're on the 'fast road' instead of the 'slow one'. I used to practice 9 hours a day and it got me sufficiently better. You got to live and breathe it if you wanna get good fast, no excuses. Although if you just wanna get good then 3 hours a day is perfect. Or if you wanna make no progress at all then practice 1 minute a day, its upto you.

Your routine sounds pretty solid. Although I hope when you fit in time for learning new chords, you're not learning new chords each time you practice everyday. That seems like a bit too much to try memorize and get down. I personally would suggest learning 3-4 new chords a week at most and just work on chord changes with your new chords and previously known chords. Although I suppose you would know best how quickly you can memorize new material, so it's up to you.

I think the most important part is to practice as long as you have patience to do so. Keep a consistant method going and try not to think about how much time you're going to practice for. Just sit down and practice slowly and precisely. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. When you're starting to feel like you're running out of patience and trying to push through things, that's when you need to stop.

Personally when I practice, I don't set out to do so for a certain amount of time. I just go until I feel like I don't want to do it anymore. Sometimes I'll practice for 30 minutes only, sometimes I'll go on for 2-3 hours.

Just remember, what you put in to your guitar work is what you'll get back. Just be patient with yourself and do however much you feel comfortable doing. Don't ever start to think that you need to force yourself to train more because you don't think you're progressing fast enough, just keep at it with a solid pace. Learning guitar isn't rocket surgery... it just takes dedication and a fair amount passion.

thanks for all the replies and input so far. i think im gonna change it up to be two ten minute blocks of everything instead of doing it straight though, since after about ten minutes i start looking at my watch seeing how much longer i have left, which is never a good sign :p

and this way it also adds extra time to everything im doing but spreads it out more.